JP-A-8-310740 (see FIG. 1, U.S. Pat. No. 5,791,645) discloses a document feeding device having two document ejection trays. A document after double-sided reading is ejected to the document discharge tray arranged above a document placing tray. A document after single-sided reading is ejected to the other document ejection tray arranged opposite the document placing tray. JP-A-8-310740 (see FIG. 4, U.S. Pat. No. 5,791,645) also discloses a document feeding device, in which a document after single-sided reading is fed through a switchback path provided below a document ejection tray, curved upward and reversed by a tip (curved portion) of the document ejection tray, and ejected to an upper surface of the document ejection tray from the tip of the document ejection tray. These configurations can align the page order of ejected documents in the page order of documents placed on the document placing tray.
However, the aforementioned configurations have a problem in that the device is large in size. That is, the former configuration has to have two document ejection trays provided separately. Thus, the device is large mainly in a horizontal direction. In the latter configuration, the document ejection tray has to have an exclusive switchback path for reversing a document. Thus, the device is large mainly in the height direction.
In recent years, as an image forming apparatus, such as a facsimile machine or a copy machine, is made smaller in size, a document feeding device which allows double-sided reading is also required to be made smaller in size.